Results for "Johnny Smith"

Johnny Smith

Guitarist Johnny Smith's career spans the decades of the 1940's through the 1990's. From the very beginning of his musical career he influenced the playing of other guitarists. In fact, many mention Smith as a major influence on their playing. The major guitar builders as Guild, Gibson, Benedetto, and the Heritage all have their signature Johnny Smith high end models as a tribute to this master. John Henry Smith, Jr. was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1922 and was only five years old when he became fascinated with the guitar. His father played five-string banjo but guitar was John's first and lasting love

Prestige Records: An Alternative Top 20 Albums

By CHRIS MAY

Along with Alfred Lion's Blue Note and Orrin Keepnews' Riverside, Bob Weinstock's Prestige was at the top table of independent New York City-based jazz labels from the early 1950s until the mid 1960s. Like those other two labels, Prestige built up a profuse catalogue packed with enduring treasures. Originally a record retailer, Weinstock ...

Take Five with Boaz Marva

By BOAZ MARVA

Meet Boaz Marva Boaz Marva is a distinctively accomplished jazz and rock guitarist, vocalist and composer. He plays in DOR SAGI band (who recently recorded an EP with keyboardist Jason Lindner as producer), worked with Amir Segall and Ben Silashi in their project Zzajeerf, gigged with Andreas Toftemark, Elam Friedlander, Naama Gheber, Joni Paladin, Sammy Weissberg, ...

Vic Juris: Tension and Release

By VICTOR L. SCHERMER

This article was first published at All About Jazz on July 28, 2009. Vic Juris is one of the premier jazz guitarists in the business today. Perhaps less known than some of his peers, he is nevertheless admired by all of them and has accumulated, since his emergence on the scene in the 1970s, ...

Dave O'Higgins & Rob Luft: Plays Monk & Trane

By CHRIS MAY

Hearing the young British guitarist Rob Luft for the first time on his debut album, Riser (Edition, 2017), was rather like hearing American guitarist Johnny Smith for the first time on Moonlight In Vermont (Roost, 1956). You knew you were listening to something special. And while much separates the players' styles, much unites them, too: Smith's ...

Shambhu: Soothing Guitar for Stressful Times

By JAKOB BAEKGAARD

The times we live in call for reflection and one of the ways of providing it is through music. Music can slow our lives down and make us live in the moment, but it can also connect people. Since he discovered music, guitarist and composer Shambhu Neil Vineberg has been on a journey that has seen ...

Wayne Wesley Johnson & Friends: Jazzamenco

By JACK BOWERS

The well-traveled and now New Mexico-based guitarist Wayne Wesley Johnson pulls out all the stops on the generally engaging double-CD set Jazzamenco, using (at various times) no less than seven guest guitarists, saxophone, Latin percussion, pan flute, charango and Chinese pipa to amplify the rhythm section of keyboards, bass and drums (which is present and accounted ...

Jack Wilkins: Windows

By CHRIS MAY

Guitarist Jack Wilkins' debut on producer Bob Shad's Mainstream label lay gathering dust for almost forty-five years before being reissued on CD by Solid Records in 2017. That disc, and now WeWantSounds' 2018 vinyl edition, have restored to general circulation an album that can be filed alongside such mid-twentieth century jazz-guitar gems as Johnny Smith's Moonlight ...