Legends of

JazzGuitar

Volume Three

featuringJim Hall

Tal FarlowPat Martino

Herb EllisCharlie Byrd

Barney Kessel

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LEGENDS OF JAZZ GUITARVOLUME THREE

by Mark Humphrey

Funny how unlikely couples get together. Take, forinstance, the guitar and jazz. The guitar, rooted some-where in Moorish Spain and Americanized as a ladies’parlor instrument or a cowboy’s companion, is not byits acoustic nature a convincing surrogate horn. Jazz,rooted in African polyrhythms and nurtured in South-ern brass bands, is seemingly too raucously aggressiveto keep company with a delicately-strung wooden box.But leave it to imaginative musicians and instrumentmakers to find ways around such contradictions. If theguitar was ever an anomaly in jazz it ceased to be longago. Can you even imagine the idiom without the guitar’svoluble presence? A key player in the band would bemissing.

The six men seen and heard in this video are amongthe most exemplary band members to choose the gui-tar as their means of expression. The initial inspirationfor most of them was Charlie Christian, who blazed trailsjazz guitarists still tred a half century later. Christianswung in the direction of bop, and his disciples (fore-most among whom are seen here) boldly carried theguitar into that next phase of jazz. Aside from their fer-vor for the potential of the guitar in the evolution of jazz,many of these artists have similar backgrounds: South-ern or Southwestern, and of roughly the same genera-tion. But their individuality is abundantly clear in per-formances ranging from meditative ballads to speed-of-sound boppers. Underlying it all is an exhilaratingsense of triumph over that apparent oxymoron, jazzguitar. Having proven that the guitar is indeed a firstrate medium for jazz expression, these artists confidentlyaddress other contradictions, ones involving evolutionwithin a well-grounded tradition. They’re serious abouttheir business, but you can see them having fun with it,too.

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JIM HALL

This collection of performances opens with a GeorgeBassman – Ned Washington ballad which was the themeof the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. Jim Hall, who played“I’m Getting Sentimental Over You” for the BBC in 1964,told Guitar Player five years later: “I enjoy ballads, stan-dards. By standards, I mean I enjoy things with chordprogressions more than ‘open free’ music. I also likemedium swing tempos.”

A year older than 1932’s “I’m Getting SentimentalOver You,” Hall says he was “brought up in the BaptistMidwestern environment of Cleveland, Ohio.” He startedplaying guitar at age ten; like most jazz guitarists of hisgeneration, Hall had a ‘Damascus road’ experience withCharlie Christian. “The first time I heard him I was 13years old,” he told down beat’s Mitchell Seidel, “and itchanged my life.” The performance that bowled Hall overwas “Grand Slam.” Half a century later, Hall saysChristian’s style “sounds old and brand-new at the sametime.”

Though determined to play jazz guitar, Hall says“Baptist guilt” drove him to earn a Bachelor of Musicdegree from the Cleveland Institute of Music. “I was ac-tually being primed to become a music teacher or com-poser,” Hall told down beat’s Bill Milkowski, but the pros-pect of an exclusively academic life prompted him todrop out before attaining his master’s degree and headfor Los Angeles. Still, Hall deems his formal training aplus: “I could read music fairly well for a guitar player,”he says (he wrote a string quartet as his thesis). “WhenI was in music school,” Hall told Guitar Player’s JimFerguson, “I heard everything from Gregorian chant to12-tone and electronic music, which was pretty newback then. It opened my view of what music could be.”

Hall arrived in Los Angeles in 1955 and simulta-neously studied classical guitar with Vicente Lopez whilehanging out on the jazz scene. If Hall was initially un-sure of his direction, a work call from drummer ChicoHamilton changed that. Still, he insists his classical train-ing left its mark. “I keep my strings lighter than most,”

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Hall told Seidel.“Part of that was try-ing to get a classicalguitar sound out ofthis instrument... Mysound is a combina-tion of Charlie Chris-tian and classicalguitar.”

Hall’s jazz bap-tism with Hamiltonwas followed by achal lenging st intwith saxophonist/clarinetist JimmyGuiffre (“It cost mea few hairs, but itwas wor th it,” hesays) and work ac-companying the su-

preme chanteuse of jazz, Ella Fitzgerald. “Playing withsingers,” Hall told Norman Mongan, “gave me a senseof space, a way of placing notes in relation to the lyrics,which is quite different from accompanying anotherinstrument.”The way Hall ‘breathes’ is heard to goodeffect in both “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You” and“My Funny Valentine.”

By the late 1950s, Hall’s services were in demandby such legends as tenor saxophonist Ben Webster andpianist Bill Evans. Hall considers his 1961 stint with tenorsaxophonist Sonny Rollins an exhilarating career high-light: “He inspired me more than any other musician Ihad played with up to then,” says Hall. Rollins is thecomposer of “Valse Hot,” which Hall performed for theBBC in 1964 as a member of the Art Farmer Quartet.With Farmer’s distinctive fluegelhorn to the fore, Hall,bassist Steve Swallow and drummer Pete La Roca madea striking ensemble. (Swallow and La Roca accompa-nied Hall on “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You.”) Hisinstrument in this group was a single pickup Gibson ES-175 which had previously belonged to Howard Roberts.

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“What I do best,” Hall has said, “is react to othermusicians.” In 1965; he realized that drink was slowinghis reactions, so he retired, got sober, and spent thenext three and-a-half years in the house band of theMerv Griffin Show. “That always sounds like a confes-sion when I mention it now,” Hall quips of his televisionjob. When the Griffin show moved from New York toCalifornia, Hall didn’t. He began performing with bass-ist Ron Carter and gradually worked his way back intodoing what he loves most, playing jazz. Twenty two yearsafter the BBC performances, we find Hall in Denmarkfor a rendition of the Rodgers and Hart classic, “MyFunny Valentine” from the 1937 musical Babes in Arms.Joining him is the extraordinary French pianist MichelPetrucciani, whose height (less than three feet) is nomeasure of his talent. Hall toured Europe withPetrucciani in 1986, and told down beat’s Bill Milkowski:“Michel’s such a wonderful player and makes it easybecause he listens so hard and reacts so fast. To me,that’s really the gist of playing together. It all boils downto whether or not the guys listen to one another, andMichel does that very well.”

Hall has been called “the most romantic and subtleof the modern guitarists,” but he has also challengedhimself in recent years by collaborating with suchprogressives as Bill Frisell and John Abercrombie.“These younger guys always inspire me, says Hall,whose first solo guitar album (Dedications & Inspirations,Telarc) appeared in 1994. “I’m sure that it’s never over,”Hall told Mitchell Seidel, “at least it certainly isn’t forme. I practiced today already, and if I don’t, it’s likesomebody stepped on my hand. That’s another one ofthe beauties of it-that it goes on forever.”

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BARNEY KESSEL, HERB ELLIS,AND CHARLIE BYRD

“THE GREAT GUITARS”

In 1973, Australian jazz promoter Kim Bonythanbrought Barney Kessel, Herb Ellis, and Charlie Byrd toAustralia and New Zealand for a nine-concert tour. “Thepromoter wanted Herb and me to play the first part ofthe concert, Charlie and his group the second, and allof us together for the finale,” Kessel told Guitar Player’sRobert Yelin. “It was a lot of fun playing with them,”Byrd told Frets editor Jim Hatlo, “and the audiencesreally responded to the way we were enjoying ourselves.So we decided to keep it going.” The tour launched TheGreat Guitars, a group which gave new meaning to theterm ‘power trio.’ Drawing on a combined 90 years ofprofessional experience, The Great Guitars featured in-spired dialogues among three of jazz guitar’s most flu-ent voices.

The most outspoken of these voices is BarneyKessel. The son of an immigrant Russian Jewishbootmaker, Kessel was born in Muskogee, Oklahomain 1923. He grew up hearing cowboy songs like “RyeWhiskey” and old hymns strummed on guitar. When hewas 12, he bought a guitar complete with strings, a pick,and an instruction book for one dollar. Tutored by Charlie

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Keoube in a Federal Music Project of the WPA, Kesselreceived a three-month ‘crash course’ in guitar andmusic theory in 1935. Two years later, Kessel was play-ing well enough to join an otherwise black jazz band. Itwas there he first heard the name Charlie Christian.

By the time he actually met Christian in 1940, Kesselhad listened intently to that pioneer’s work with BennyGoodman and thoroughly absorbed Christian’s style. Butthe experience of jamming with his idol jarred him:“When I began improvising with Charlie Christian,”Kessel recalled, he had to ask himself, “What am I go-ing to play?” Kessel realized he would have to find his own musical voice rather than merely mirror Christian’s.

Experiences in a varied settings on the road (withthe bands of Chico Marx, Artie Shaw and Charlie Barnet)and in the studio (with the legendary likes of LesterYoung and Charlie Parker) went a long way toward earn-ing Kessel his own unique identity, one which bridgedthe sounds of swing and bebop. In 1952, he joined bass-ist Ray Brown and pianist Oscar Peterson in an influen-tial trio which spotlighted Kessel’s talents. But familyconcerns prompted Kessel to leave Peterson’s trio in1953. Before departing, he recommended Herb Ellis forthe job.

“We met 30 years ago at the Taft Hotel in New YorkCity,” Ellis told Robert Yelin in 1974. “Barney had sometrouble with his guitar, so he came to borrow mine. Hewas working with Artie Shaw then, and I was off fromthe Jimmy Dorsey band that night. From that first meet-ing we jammed, and we’ve been jamming ever since.”

Beyond common musical passions, Ellis and Kesselshared similar beginnings in Southwestern small towns.For Ellis, it was Farmville, Texas, where he was born in1921. “My mother tells me I always played the blues,”Ellis recalls. His interest in jazz blossomed at North TexasState College, where Ellis majored in music and eagerlyexplored Charlie Christian’s recordings with BennyGoodman’s Sextet. Both Ellis and Kessel cite the sameformative influences: Christian, tenor saxophonist LesterYoung and alto saxophonist Charlie Parker.

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Kansas City was still a jazz Mecca when Ellis joinedthe Glen Gray’s Casa Loma Orchestra in the early 1940s.Praised in down beat and Metronome, Ellis then movedup to Jimmy Dorsey’s Orchestra. After World War II,piano, guitar and bass trios were all the rage and forawhile Ellis became a third of the Soft Winds. It was acalm before the storm of Oscar Peterson’s frenetic tem-pos in the trio which Ellis joined at Kessel's departurein 1953. “Herb Ellis,” Peterson wrote in Lp sleeve notes,“demonstrates...that he is not only a talented soloist,but that he has complete control of his instrument, alongwith a capacity for invention at all tempos...” Consider-ing its source, that’s high praise indeed.

Following five exhilarating years with Peterson andbassist Ray Brown, Ellis left to work as accompanist toElla Fitzgerald for a year. There were occasional ven-tures as leader, such as the highly-regarded Verve al-bum Nothing But the Blues, but Ellis spent much of the1960s and part of the 1970s in studio orchestras for asuccession of television variety-talk shows, includingthe Merv Griffin Show. Ellis has characterized the stu-dio musician’s life as “99% boredom, 1% absolute ter-ror,” but admits he occasionally found inspiring mate-rial in that role.

The outstanding feature of Ellis’ solos, writes jazzguitar historian Norman Mongan, is “an extraordinarilyearthy quality...Ellis is unbeatable where swing and driveare concerned; his is a style of classic modern simplic-ity.” Ellis seemed to emphasize much the same point indiscussing the empathy among Kessel, Byrd and him-self with Robert Yelin: “We all have a mutual respectand great feeling for swing,” he said. “Without even talk-ing about it among ourselves, swing is the basis for ourwanting to play the guitar.”

Charlie Byrd points to a slightly different impetusfor taking up the instrument: “It was such a happy so-cial occasion to play music at my house,” he recalledin a 1967 Guitar Player, “I guess I just wanted to be inon it.” The house was in Chuckatuck, Virginia, whereByrd was born in 1925. His father and uncle played fin-gerstyle guitar and his father ran a country store where

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“the black blues pickers came in on Saturday nights toplay and drink a few beers,” Byrd recalled to Frets edi-tor Jim Hatlo. He “learned by listening and absorbing.”But the radio brought him another musical world: “FredWaring had a radio program that Les Paul was on dur-ing the late 1930s,” Byrd told Hatlo, and, of course, therewere Benny Goodman’s groups. Theirs was the musicByrd aspired to play, even though he was happy in histeens to pick country and folk tunes on radio stations inNewport News and Suffolk. (At 14, Byrd acquired aSears Silvertone electric guitar and amplifier, the firstsuch contraption heard in Chuckatuck!)

Like Kessel, Byrd got an early taste of the jazz lifewhen, in his 14th summer, he played with a dance or-chestra from William and Mary College at the resort townof Virginia Beach. The precocious Byrd enrolled in theVirginia Polytechnic Institute at age 16 and played inthe school dance band. During World War II, Byrd playedin the Special Forces band in Europe. He also got achance to sit in with Django Reinhardt before shippinghome. That meeting, Byrd asserts, “decided me on acareer in jazz.”

But he was sidetracked for a time by the lure of theclassical guitar. Thanks in part to the G.I. Bill, Byrd stud-ied with Sophocles Papas and, in 1954, made a pilgrim-age to Siena, Italy to study with Segovia. The experi-ence offered Byrd the humbling insight that “I wasn’treally going to be a significant classical guitar player,”he told Hatlo. “I realized that it might be a better ideafor me to use all my life’s experience, in jazz and popu-lar music as well, combining them with classical. So Istarted working out some jazz arrangements on classi-cal guitar, and I thought, ‘Someone might be interestedin recording these.”’ Savoy Records was interested, andin 1956 Byrd’s Jazz Recital album appeared.

A 1961 State Department-sponsored ‘goodwill’ tourof Latin America brought Byrd into contact with thesounds of bossa nova. The following year his collabora-tion with tenor saxophonist Stan Getz, Jazz Samba, car-ried Brazil’s ‘new beat’ to the U.S. and became a sur-prise hit. (“Desifinado” made it to # 15 on the pop

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charts!) “I guess that got me typecast a little more thanI would have liked,” Byrd admitted 20 years later, but itwas a strong validation of his move to explore jazz onthe classical guitar.

Ironically, the ‘Great Guitar’ heard playing bossanova on this collection isn’t Byrd but Kessel who showshis confidence in an idiom generally associated with fin-gerstyle guitarists and nylon-strung guitars. His medleyof Luiz Bonfa’s “Manha de Carnaval” and “Samba deOrfeu” is taken from the evocative score for the 1960film, Black Orpheus. Accompanying Kessel on this 1969date in Denmark are Larry Ridley, bass, and DonLamond, drums .

A decade later, Kessel and Ellis teamed up on Iowapublic television’s Jazz At The Maintenance Shop for asassy sprint through George Gershwin’s “Oh! Lady BeGood,” a standard from the 1924 musical of the samename. The performance clearly reveals this duo’s rootsin the Southwest, which gave the guitar world not onlyCharlie Christian but electric blues pioneer T–BoneWalker and Western Swing guitarist-arranger EldonShamblin of Bob Wills Texas Playboys. Kessel and Ellisseemingly return home here. Such performances in-spired Norman Mongan to observe that Ellis’ “South-western twang...powerful attack and ‘stringy’ tonalitymake constant reference to his Texas origins.”

Proving that great tunes often come from unlikelysources is the Bryson & Goldberg “Flintstones Theme”from the 1960s television cartoon series. Kessel andEllis take a fiercely swinging romp through Bedrock ac-companied by Joe Byrd, bass, and Wayne Phillips,drums. This performance is from a ‘duo’ spotlight ofThe Great Guitars captured in Cork, Ireland in 1980.“What’s great about these concerts,” Ellis, the longtimetelevision studio ace once said, “is that we’re playingduets for the public and getting paid for it.”

Trios, too. Our collection’s finale features the fullfleet of Great Guitars in a medley tribute to three earlierextraordinary guitarists. It opens with “Nuages,” themost popular composition of Django Reinhardt (1910-1953), who recorded it at least 8 times. (“Nuages” made

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both the French and British ‘hit parades.’) In a 1976Guitar Player tribute to Reinhardt, Kessel wrote: “Hesymbolizes the Gypsy spirit, the thing in everyone thatwants to be free—to be an adult but not lose the child-like quality.”

“Goin’ Out of My Head” was a 1964 hit for LittleAnthony & the Imperials which became a 1966 Grammy-winning vehicle for Wes Montgomery (1925-1968). Itrepresents a phase of Montgomery’s career whichbrought him popular acclaim along with the disdain ofsome jazz fans who felt he had sold out. In a 1972 Gui-tar Player discussion (‘Where Are the Jazz Guitar Lps?’),Kessel remarked: “I remember talking with Wes Mont-gomery when he was playing in a packed club. He wasn’tbitter, just realistic. He said, ‘See those people out there?They didn’t come to hear me, they came to see me playone, two or three of my hit records, because when I de-cide to do a tune of mine or Coltrane’s ‘Giant Steps’instead of ‘Goin’ Out My Head’ they get bored and starttalking.’” Success for a jazz musician can be a mixedblessing.

The medley closes with the Benny Goodman-LionelHampton composition “Flying Home,” long the themeof the Lionel Hampton Orchestra and, in its early days,a showcase for Charlie Christian (1916-1942), withoutwhom most of the music on this video is unthinkable.The trio of Byrd (on an Ovation acoustic–electric),Kessel and Ellis (both playing Gibsons) gave this ex-hilarating 1980 performance in Cork, Ireland in the com-pany of bassist Joe Byrd and drummer Wayne Phillips.

In a 1974 Guitar Player interview, Ellis gave awaypart of The Great Guitars’ game. “What’s particularlygood about a trio,” Ellis explained to Robert Yelin, “isthat the soloist can concentrate completely on hischorus...the other two guys will come in to take overthe ensemble part while the soloist is thinking only abouthis solo.” Byrd summed up The Great Guitars experi-ence this way: “We have a great time,” he said, “and weenjoy each other’s company...We just love to go out thereand swing for them. We couldn’t swing the way we do ifthese concerts didn’t make us happy.”

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TAL FARLOW

The stunningvelocity and facilitywith which Tal Farlow,pianist Tommy Flana-gan and bassist RedMitchell blaze through“Fascinating Rhythm”(a Gershwin tune fromthe 1924 musical, Oh!Lady Be Good) inLorenzo DeStefano’s1981 documentary,Talmadge Farlow, is ajaw-dropping study inabandon earned byyears of woodshedd-ing. Farlow has onlyreluctantly left hiswoodshed in recentdecades, and the rar-ity of his public ap-

pearances has only enhanced his deserved reputationas a jazz genius.

Jim Hall has called Farlow “the most complete mu-sician I know on guitar,” and he’s not alone in that opin-ion. Farlow turned up the heat several notches on bop-era guitarists by his innovative work in the Red NorvoTrio in the 1950s. “Farlow took the message of hardbop and translated it for the guitar,” writes NormanMongan in The History of the Guitar in Jazz. “Alwaysinspired, he let ideas flow from under his fingers andcreates a sound more akin to that of a wind instrumentthan a guitar.” Blowing at tempos few guitarists darematch, it wasn’t only for his large hands that Farlowearned the nickname the Octopus: he was seeminglyeverywhere on the fingerboard at once.

Talmadge Holt Farlow was born in Greensboro,North Carolina in 1921. It’s often been said that he didn’tstart playing till his early twenties, but that isn’t exactly

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true. “I could already play the guitar a little bit,” Farlowtold down beat reporter Lee Jeske, “but the guitar was,in most cases, part of a hillbilly band—you know, withthree chords.” The guitarist who made him think, “NowI’ve got an instrument here that can conceivably moveout front” was, naturally, Charlie Christian. “Christianwas the one who got me moving,” Farlow told Burt Korall(down beat February 22, 1979). “I bought all theGoodman–Christian recordings and memorized Charlie’schoruses, note-for-note, playing them on a secondhandfourteen dollar guitar and twenty dollar amplifier.” Work-ing as a sign painter in Greensboro, Farlow had few op-portunities to play with other jazz musicians. However,radio brought him the sounds not only of Charlie Chris-tian but of such innovators as Lester Young and pianistArt Tatum. Self-taught, Farlow had an innate sense ofthe guitar’s potential by the time he found himself work-ing piano-bass guitar trios in Philadelphia during WorldWar II.

Pianist/singer Dardanelle Breckenridge gave Farlowhis first noteworthy job in 1947. It took him to New YorkCity, where he heard Charlie Parker “giving off sparks,influencing every young player in sight,” Farlow toldKorall. “At the beginning, I had some difficulty gettinginto what Bird and Diz and Miles and those fellows weredoing...I found the bop phrases didn’t fall easily on theguitar. But I kept listening and working out my prob-lems until I felt comfortable with the modern idiom.” Heworked so effectively in that idiom that vibes wizard RedNorvo hired Farlow in 1949. His work in Norvo’s Triowith bassist Charles Mingus is the stuff of legend. “I wasno faster than the next guy until I went with Red,” Farlowtold Korall. “I had to work like crazy just to keep upwith Red and Mingus—they forced me into the wood-shed.”

After nearly five years with Norvo’s Trio, Farlow de-parted in 1953 for a stint with Artie Shaw’s last GramercyFive. Farlow rejoined Norvo for awhile in a quintet, thenfronted his own trio with pianist Eddie Costa. In 1958Farlow left New York City and its jazz scene for a life ofanonymity in Sea Bright on the Jersey Shore. “I got fed

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up with the back stage parts of the jazz life,” Farlow ex-plained to Korall. “It seemed that I became increasinglyinvolved with stuff that had nothing to do with music.”A country boy at heart, sign painting and occasionallocal gigs in Sea Bright suited Farlow. “I don’t have tobe out there,” Farlow said, “dealing with situations I finddifficult to handle. I don’t need expensive things or ahectic life. So I stay in Sea Bright.”

Starting in 1967, Farlow began making occasionalforays “out there” – a reunion with Norvo on a 1969Newport All-Stars tour and a Prestige album the sameyear, The Return of Tal Farlow, reminded the jazz worldhe was still a player of ferocious energy. Recordings forthe Concord label in the 1970s brought Farlow furtheracclaim, and in 1981 he ventured out with Norvo and inthe company of Herb Ellis and Barney Kessel. The per-formance from that same year in this video affirms thatFarlow at 60 was still in peak form.

For all his harmonic invention, Farlow never learnedto read music, and felt self-conscious about that. Hisunease may have contributed to his retirement, particu-larly from recording. Asked in a 1969 Guitar Player foradvice to aspiring jazz guitarists, Farlow said: “You haveto really play all the time so that you are able to ex-ecute any ideas that come into your head. To be a jazzplayer, that’s important. After you learn the scales, tobe a better jazz player, you should play more jazz andlots of it.”

PAT MARTINO

His father, once a pupil of Eddie Lang, told him atbirth: “With these hands you are really going to learn toplay guitar.” Instead of bullying his son into practice, helured him to the guitar by forbidding him to touch theone hidden under his bed. “I was... a prodigy,” Martinotold Guitar Player’s Vic Trigger. “When I was 11 yearsold I had about the same chops I have today...” By thetime he was 16, he was accompanying such R&B starsas Lloyd Price and Chubby Checker. Six years laterMartino’s debut album as a leader, El Hombre, madehim a presence to reckon with in the jazz guitar world.

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His punchy 1987 performance here of his composi-tion “Do You Have A Name?” in the company of bassistHarvie Swartz and drummer Joey Baron plainly showswhy. “Mr. Martino,” wrote New York Times reviewer Pe-ter Watrous, “was among the few important jazz guitar-ists to arrive in the 1960s, somebody who understoodthe place of a blues sensibility in jazz and who couldimprovise with the fluency and drive of a horn player...”Born in Philadelphia in 1944, Pat Azzara took the namehis father used as a singer, Martino, and paid his duesnot only accompanying pop singers such as FrankieAvalon but jazzmen such as tenor saxophonist WillisJackson. For a child prodigy, it was a humbling dose ofreality: “I was, for the first time in my life, reduced tobeing a subordinate,” Martino told Trigger. “I thoughtthat once you had reached these incredible chops youwere revered, literally revered...It required so much re-definition from me to survive that it brought mestrength.”

Martino’s 1967 stint with the John Handy Quintetthrust him into the spotlight; by the end of the 1960s hewas fronting his own groups. Initially indebted to theinfluence of Johnny Smith and Wes Montgomery, in the1970s Martino’s music explored not only such familiarjazz touchstones as the blues and bossa nova but alsoIndian music and modern compositional ideas inspiredby Karlheinz Stockhausen and Elliott Carter. “I like towalk up to the guitar and throw myself into the middleof a creative experience,” said Martino, who did exactlythat in the performance we see from Baltimore’s ‘Ethel’sPlace.’

In 1976, Martino began suffering memory loss andheadaches. A nightmarish four years of locked wardsand shock treatments followed. Finally, it was discov-ered that Martino had a brain aneurysm; an operationto restore blood flow to his brain left him without hismemory. Martino regained his brilliant skills by study-ing his old recordings.

In a January 25, 1995 New York Times review of aBottom Line appearance, Martino’s first New York Cityouting in at least a decade, Peter Watrous wrote: “Mr.

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Martino proved himself to be as charismatic an impro-viser as ever.” In the Times only a couple of weeks later,Matt Resnicoff praised Martino’s “torrential, groove-driven melodies that seemed to stab at the listener fromseveral directions at once.” Happily, Pat Martino’s backdoing what he does best. “Jazz,” Martino once reflected,“is a way of life, not an idiom of music. Jazz is sponta-neous improvisation. If you ever walk out of your housewith nowhere to go, just walking for the pleasure of it,you’ll find that you improvise. Everyone in life impro-vises; jazz is just a relative degree of improvisation.”

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PERFORMANCES & PERSONNEL

1. JIM HALL(G),STEVE SWALLOW(B) and PETE La ROCA(D)

“Jazz 625” September 26, 1964 London, EnglandSong: I’m Getting Sentimental Over You

2. BARNEY KESSEL(G),LARRY RIDLEY(B) and DON LAMOND (D)

Newport All-Stars, Denmark 1969Song: Medley Manha, De Carnaval

and Samba De Orfeu

3. TAL FARLOW (G),TOMMY FLANAGAN (P) and RED MITCHELL (B)

New York City 1981Song: Fascinating t Rhythm

4. BARNEY KESSEL (G) and HERB ELLIS (G)“Jazz At The Maintenance Shop”, Ames, Iowa 1979

Song: Oh Lady Be Good

5. JIM HALL (G) and MICHEL PETRUCCIANI (P)Denmark 1986

Song: My Funny Valentine

6. PAT MARTINO (G),HARVIE SWARTZ (B) and JOEY BARON (D)

“Ethel's Place” Baltimore, Maryland 1987Song: Do You Have A Name

7. BARNEY KESSEL (G), HERB ELLIS (G),JOE BYRD (B) and WAYNE PHILLIPS (D)The Great Guitars In Cork, Ireland 1980

Song: Flintstone Theme

8. JIM HALL WITH THE ART FARMER QUARTET ON“Jazz 625” September 26, 1964 London, England

JIM HALL (G), ART FARMER (Fluegelhorn),STEVE SWALLOW(B) and PETE La ROCA(D)

Song: Valse Hot

9. BARNEY KESSEL (G), HERB ELLIS (G), CHARLIEBYRD (G), JOE BYRD (B) and WAYNE PHILLIPS (D).

The Great Guitars In Cork, Ireland 1980.Songs: Nuages, Goin' Out Of My Head and Flying Home

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The guitar's odyssey in jazz is presented afresh in Vestapol's thirdcompilation of prime performances from six of the idiom's moversand shakers. These men are among the most exemplary band mem-bers to choose the guitar as their means of expression. The initialinspiration for most of them was Charlie Christian, who blazed trailsjazz guitarists still tred a half century later. Christian swung in thedirection of bop, and his disciples (foremost among whom are seenhere) boldly carried the guitar into that next phase of jazz. Aside fromtheir fervor for the potential of the guitar in the evolution of jazz,many of these artists have similar backgrounds: Southern or South-western, and of roughly the same generation. But their individualityis abundantly clear in performances ranging from meditative balladsto speed-of-sound boppers. Underlying it all is an exhilarating senseof triumph over that apparent oxymoron, jazz guitar. Having proventhat the guitar is indeed a first rate medium for jazz expression, theseartists confidently address other contradictions, ones involving evo-lution within a well-grounded tradition. They’re serious about theirbusiness, but you can see them having fun with it, too.

1. JIM HALL I’m Getting Sentimental Over You 2. BARNEYKESSEL Medley: Manha De Carnaval & Samba De Orfeu

3. TAL FARLOW Fascinating Rhythm 4. BARNEY KESSEL & HERBELLIS Oh! Lady Be Good 5. JIM HALL My Funny Valentine

6. PAT MARTINO Do You Have A Name 7. BARNEY KESSEL &HERB ELLIS Flintstones Theme 8. JIM HALL Valse Hot

9. BARNEY KESSEL, HERB ELLIS & CHARLIE BYRD Medley:Nuages, Goin’ Out Of My Head & Flying Home

ISBN: 1-57940-916-4

0 1 1 6 7 1 30439 7

Running Time: 63 minutes • B/W and ColorFront & Back Photos by Tom Copi

Nationally distributed by Rounder Records,One Camp Street, Cambridge, MA 02140

Representation to Music Stores byMel Bay Publications

® 2001 Vestapol ProductionsA division of

Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop Inc.

Vestapol 13043