Results for "guitar"

Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Born: March 20, 1915

Arkansas native Rosetta Nubin Tharpe was one of gospel music’s first superstars, the first gospel performer to record for a major record label (Decca), and an early crossover from gospel to secular music. Rosetta Nubin was born in Cotton Plant (Woodruff County) on March 20, 1915, to Katie Bell Nubin, an evangelist, singer, and mandolin player for the Church of God in Christ. No mention is found of her father. Nubin began performing at age four, playing guitar and singing “Jesus is on the Main Line.” By age six, Nubin appeared regularly with her mother, performing a mix of gospel and secular music styles that would eventually make her famous. As a youth, she could sing and keep on pitch and hold a melody. Her vocal qualities, however, paled beside her abilities on the guitar"she played individual tones, melodies, and riffs instead of just strumming chords. This talent was all the more remarkable because, at the time, few African-American women played guitar. Nubin’s guitar style was influenced by her mother’s mandolin playing, pianist Arizona Dranes, and composer Florence Price, with whom Rosetta studied in Cotton Plant. She also sang the popular hymns of the day, including the compositions of bluesman turned gospel musician, Thomas A. Dorsey. Indeed, elements of blues are readily apparent in Nubin’s guitar styling. Later, Nubin’s music would be influenced by her work with jazz greats Lucky Milliner and Cab Calloway. Billed as the “singing and guitar-playing miracle,” Nubin was an added attraction at her mother’s church services. Both mother and daughter worked as members of an evangelistic troupe that worked throughout the South before arriving in Chicago in the late 1920s. There they became part of the growing Holiness movement, a late nineteenth-century offshoot of the Pentecostal denomination which, in the 1890s, led to the formation of the Church of God in Christ (COGIC) and other new religious groups.

Tom Taylor

Tom Taylor is an internationally known guitarist/composer whose music is a hybrid of jazz, classical, rock and even a dash of blues and bluegrass. His new CD, Home, features the world-renowned Turtle Island String Quartet. Listen to excerpts at itunes.com, cdbaby.com/cd/taylortom2 and (soon) www.tom-taylor.com Tom is one of the winners of Musician Magazine's "Best Unsigned Band" contest. His winning entry from The Crossing, "Aubade," is described as "the hardest tune I ever had to record" by mandolin virtuoso David Grisman. When Tom's full orchestral arrangement of "Big Basin Breakdown" (also from The Crossing, with guests the Kronos Quartet) received its European premier, it brought down the house at the famed Hercules and Prinzregenten theatres in Munich, Germany

Martin Taylor

Born: October 20, 1956

Multi award winning guitarist and composer MARTIN TAYLOR has established a unique musical career as an internationally acclaimed musician, and his inimitable style has seen him recognized as the world’s foremost exponent of solo jazz guitar playing. Although completely self taught, he has enjoyed a remarkable musical career spanning across five decades, and during that time has invented and developed a way of playing the guitar that is admired, and often imitated, by guitarists all over the world. As well as being a true guitar innovator, he is also a master concert performer, dazzling audiences with his solo shows, which combine virtuosity, emotion, humor, with a strong stage presence. He spends much of the year traveling the world, playing in concert halls in Europe, North America, Japan, Asia, and Australasia as well as presiding over the uniquely innovative Martin Taylor Guitar Academy Online. As well as his solo concerts and recordings, he has also collaborated with musicians from many different musical genre including, Stephane Grappelli, Jeff Beck, Chet Atkins, Bill Wyman, George Harrison, Dionne Warwick, Diane Schuur and Jamie Cullum. From 1979 to 1990 he toured the world and recorded over 20 albums with the French jazz violin legend STEPHANE GRAPPELLI

Gabor Szabo

Born: March 8, 1936

An innovative musician who combined the folk music of his native Hungary with his passion for jazz, Gabor Szabo began his study of the guitar at the age of 14. Following a single free lesson that came as a gift with his first instrument, he then began to teach himself to play by emulating the American jazz performers he heard on the radio. Some work with various bands in the Budapest area gradually developed, but in 1956 Szabo was forced to take refuge in Austria by the Communist takeover of Hungary. Eventually settling in California, Szabo struggled to establish himself as a musician; for a time he worked as a janitor and used his earnings to attend the Berklee School of Music in Boston between 1958 and 1960

Andy Summers

Born: December 31, 1942

In the summer of 97, millions of people were beguiled by an Andy Summers guitar lick, just as they were regularly in the decade previous. A single by a certain rap impresario copped the Police's "Every Breath You Take," and the song's arresting power once again held sway at the top of the charts. Sure Sting wrote the sampled tune, but it was that tolling Andy riff that set it into enduring motion. Since 1986, when the Police left the stage as the biggest rock band in the world, Andy Summers has followed his own muse, cultivating the ambient and improvisatory streaks always evident in his distinctive soundprint

Monnette Sudler

Born: June 5, 1952

HER INSPIRATION

Monnette’s loves music by classic jazz guitarists like Wes Montgomery, Pat Martino, and Bola Sete. She continues to be inspired by her family, colleagues and the communities where she has either lived or been of some service. Monnette grew up listening to Nat King Cole and the Motown sounds. Her first teacher was a positive influence that taught folk music of different eras, Paul Simon, Richie Havens, Joni Mitchell and Mississippi Reds. Later Monnette was influenced by the music of John Coltrane, Yuseef Lateef, Thelonious Monk, Art Blakey, Wayne Shorter and Miles Davis.

Dave Stryker

Born: March 30, 1957

Whether you’ve heard guitarist Dave Stryker fronting his own group (with 35 CD’s as a leader to date), or as a featured sideman with Stanley Turrentine, Jack McDuff, and many others, you know why Gary Giddins in the Village Voice called him “one of the most distinctive guitarists to come along in recent years.” He was recently voted once again one of the Top Guitarists in the 2025 Downbeat Critics and Readers polls. His most recent CD Stryker with Strings Goes to the Movies with a 30- piece studio orchestra received 4 Stars and Editor's Pick in Downbeat magazine. 

Rory Stuart

Rory Stuart is an innovative jazz guitarist and composer, with a mature modern style. He's been critically acclaimed as one of the foremost young musicians of the decade. Stuart has a healthy respect for the jazz tradition. Largely self-taught, he's benefited from an ongoing exchange of musical ideas with his long-time friend Tuck Andress, and studied briefly but intensively with excellent "guitarist's guitarist" Dave Creamer. He cites John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, and Wayne Shorter as influences; yet his style is uniquely his own. Described in JAZZ TIMES as "perhaps THE most innovative straight-ahead jazz guitarist to emerge in years," his two previous recordings as leader of a quartet have both received 4 star reviews in DOWNBEAT and been voted in the 10 best of the year in CODA

Jewell "Babe" Stovall

Born: October 14, 1907

Jewell “Babe” Stovall - Blues singer, guitarist (1907 - 1974) Jewell “Babe” Stovall was a unique Mississippi Bluesman, his finger picking style combined by his use of the National Steel Guitar, gave him an original and distinctive tone. Stovall was born in Tylertown, Mississippi and began playing around with the guitar at an early age. His guitar technique was influenced by Tommy Johnson, whom he met in Mississippi during the 1930s Depression era. He started with the usual playing at local parties and social functions, before moving to Louisiana sometime in the ‘30’s. He traveled between there and his hometown for quite a spell doing a series of odd jobs yet kept playing, winding up in New Orleans in the 1960’s. Though there were some sessions done in the late ‘50’s, Stovall’s first recognition came for Verve in 1964, released as “Babe Stovall.” He was back in the studio in ’66 and ’68 which are now out as “The Old Ace: Mississippi Blues & Religious Songs,” released on Arcola in 2003. Stovall was an excellent and adaptable blues guitarist who could move from Delta blues to folk to gospel

John Stowell

John Stowell began his successful career in the early 1970's with private study with guitarist Linc Chamberland and pianist John Mehegan. Both men were valuable mentors to John, allowing him to play with them as he progressed in his development. Several years later he met bassist David Friesen in New York City, and they formed a duo that recorded and toured prolifically for seven years, with performances in the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia.

In 1983, John and David joined flutist Paul Horn and Paul's son Robin Horn (on drums) for a historic tour of the Soviet Union